In a communications system, generally, channel coding is used to improve reliability of data transmission and to ensure quality of communication. A polar code is a linear block code, and is an encoding manner in which it has been theoretically proved that the polar code can obtain a Shannon capacity, with low coding and decoding complexity.
To improve communication performance, a Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) technology may be used. Rate matching needs to be performed on a Polar code to match a bearing capacity of a physical channel, and a bit transmitted in HARQ retransmission each time is determined by using rate matching.
In the prior art, a traditional HARQ technology of random (or quasi-random) puncturing is used for a Polar code, that is, a puncturing location is randomly or quasi-randomly selected. However, a frame error rate is relatively high and HARQ performance is relatively poor in the prior art.
Therefore, a technology that can improve the HARQ performance is desired.